SailorJ.com

Category: social media

  • Mastodon, the new twitter?

    So here we are, getting ready to end 2022, and the place you put your random bullshit was hijacked by Dr Evil, and you’re think, what the fuck do I do now?

    Of course there is the thought, you don’t like it, leave! And that is what so many are doing. I think that we have learned a lot about the definition of free speech lately. If you don’t think Money equals speech, then you skipped out on lesson one.

    He who owns the gold makes the rules

    We live in a world where a small abound of companies own the narrative of what we see and hear. Particularly that’s true when it comes to news. I don’t think that we worry too much about entertainment, but we are concerned about issues like justice and truth. There was a time when our superheroes were reporters. It was noble to be someone who sniffed out a story, because where there is smoke, there is fire.

    Superman and Lois Lane weekly found out about some evil plot and got in trouble then Superman saved the day Where are the Superheroes?

    Freedom in the Federation

    The federation sounds like a Star Trek term. You too can Join the Federation. Follow the Prime Directive, and be ethical in your world. Each instance has its own set of rules, and they are loosely interconnected. It’s amazing when you think about it. You can, with some cost start your own Mastodon server, and own your content 100%. That in itself is a big Fuck You to every other social media platform out there. Personally, I love blogging. I’m into writing, so my blog here is where it’s at, but connections happen in the social media universe.

    I’ve been on Mastodon for a few weeks and I like a lot of what I see. I’m hoping it only gets better, and people continue to show it love and stick with it. It can feel a little complicated. It’s not tik tok or Snapchat. Right now it is missing some features that people would love to have. But I say give it time. It will happen. And maybe App developers will show up with amazing apps as well.

    Who should own social media?

    Software development is a work of art and love. The creator should own it. What we know is that these large networks are comprised of more than just people who write code. It takes a lot of talented programmers and developers to make a network. And as these applications get huge followings, it demands the creation of a Company. And these companies generally go public.

    What Elon Musk did was more than hurt some employee of a once publicly traded company. He also betrayed the trust of the user base. Changing the TOS within an instant. I suppose it goes back to rule number one. This is the risk of handing over your persona and content to someone who owes you nothing and you give everything, you can be obliterated in a blink of an eye. So maybe that’s just too much power for one person to yield, without checks and balances.

    There is no such thing as Free Speech

    There is no such thing as free speech. You are not free from your consequences of your speech. You have Freedom of Speech. There is a difference. See https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does

    Social media is an outreach of society. It’s a place where people do come together in the virtual world to come together, celebrate, argue, mourn, inform, discuss, learn, communicate, be entertained, and find love. I don’t know, we probably do a lot more than that. But in the end, we have to own our own boxes, and our own voice. That’s the point, you want Speech, well you just might have to pay for it.

  • Can you see the real me?

    It is a fact that we can only see reflections of who we are. No one can see their true self.

    Recently I went on the Lensa app and let them do the deep AI art on my profile photo to see what they would come up with. It was crazy and amazing. I enjoyed seeing it, but it made me ask, how do I vision my own appearance to the world.

    Sure I look in the mirror and get weirded out about every hair out of place, but to see myself with a full head of hair and smoothed out wrinkles and just a bunch of changes and outfits was eye opening.

    Who am I?

    We always want to know if we are more than what we think we are. It just goes to show, we can visualize ourselves to be something different and embody that.

    Is any of this the real me?

  • Remind your friends, “Know Your Audience”

    Hello 2019! Time to have a serious conversation to my politically minded friends. I am glad you are thinking about the country and politics. But I would caution you about where and how you post your thoughts on the subject these days, but particularly on Facebook. If you are unaware, you may be exposing your material to a public audience for some of your private thoughts that you may only want to share with just your friends or even just closest of friends.

    You might say, well, who cares? This is who I am and it doesn’t matter. This is true, until you realize that you have an employer, or organization that you represent that may be feeling some guilt by association.

    I know we all think we are on the right side of history with our political views. But the truth is that no one is going to change your mind, and you are not going to change anyone else’s mind either.

    If you feel your are going to explode if you don’t post your political views, try an anonymous twitter handle, join a private facebook group, or limit the audience for your facebook posts.

    Bottom line is, be smart. Don’t spread hate, and fear and lies. Your reputation is on the line, as well as your friendships. Think about it.

  • What do we need “Social Media” for?

    You might ask, why do I need Facebook or Twitter or whatever? And you would be correct to think that you probably don’t if you do not care about reaching out and engaging an audience. More importantly an audience that wants to read your information because they subscribed to have it show up in their feed, just like you may be reading this article.

    Back quite a while ago, the promise of feed syndication was something complicated that probably scared a lot of people. But it is the modern solution to decentralize ourselves from the group think that we have been exposed to by the likes of the social media giants. Start your own blog, host it yourself, it’s cheap enough to do. The problem comes with engagement. What platform does the metadata of likes, views, and comments get used? How many logins do you need to deal with news and blogs and friends postings. Twitter was called a microblogging service at one time. Now it’s just free form open texting at best.

    We like our walled gardens. But all walled gardens eventually give way to the next big thing. If you’ve been around long enough, you watched them all fall, from Fidonet, AOL, eWorld, IRC, MySpace, and so on… the only constant is change.

    Apple has a chance to create a metadata “safe space” because of the user base it has, and it’s direct os for mobile and long term use of RSS. How serious are they about security these days? But they could decentralize the Social Network space. Google tried many times and have not been very successful in their Social Offerings.

    I worry about the Narrowing of voices. People being banned on different networks, government regulations restricting free speech, and the obscuring of facts by people unaware how they are being marketed to.

    Do not take your privacy and freedom for granted. The chance to get it back once the cat is out of the bag is not very good. Most people are out of some bag, but who knows how far it will go, or what it could mean? Such as insurance, jobs, etc… who knows, or worse yet, wholesale monitoring of people bypassing our 4th Amendment rights.

    We do need Social Media to stay in touch with our network of friends and colleagues. What we don’t need is companies exposing our person data for financial gain.